Quack Is The New Black

The UK homeopathy bodies are continuing their use of PR to try to raise the profile of their magic medicine rather than offer actual evidence and rational debate.

At last week’s National Television Awards, Hot Gossip founder, Arlene Phillips wore what was described as a ‘homeopathic dress’. This is somewhat less exciting than you might at first think. You would be excused for thinking a homeopathic dress would make the Emperor’s New Clothes look positively leaden and frumpy. However, this dress contained real ingredients unlike homeopathic medicine.

Arlene explained on the red carpet that she was promoting homeopathy and the dress was covered in flowers used in the rituals to make some remedies. The press release from 4Homeopathy, the industry lobbying said group, said the dress Arlene was ‘wearing a “living” dress decorated with real flowers that are all used for homeopathic remedies, including Clematis, Hydrangea and others.’ A few papers picked up the story: the Daily Mail said Arlene looked ‘rather like she’d ransacked an eight-year-old’s wardrobe’.

It is quite understandable that the homeopaths chose flower remedies even though flowers make up a small proportion of the total substances used in homeopathic rituals. Looking at Ainsworths website, the UK leading homeopathic pharmacy, we can see remedies made using fossils, salamanders, dandruff, rats blood, hoover dust, brillo pads, exhaust fumes, plaice, twiglets, gin, shipwreck, goldfish, mustard gas and mobile phone radiation. That dress could have been far more interesting.

Flower remedies have always done well for homeopaths. They of course have a natural appeal. Dr Bach’s Flower Remedies are one of the most well known homeopathic variant on sales. Bach also developed a line of what he called Bowel Nosodes, derived from the gut flora. You have to search harder to find Bach Shit Remedies on your High Street.

It is a great shame that celebrities continue to put their names to such dubious causes. Ms Phillips may well believe that arnica has helped with bruising. Or that as she states she uses it “to aid digestion and to help keep her stomach healthy”. (Although I am not sure such a used could ever fit into what a true homeopath would recommend.) It’s not the bumps and bruises of choreography that we should be worried about when using useless remedies. It is what homeopaths are recommending when the press are not around. Even today I saw the British Homeopathic Association promoting their sugar pills for dangerous, life threatening conditions like heart failure. And the homeopaths funding the campaign group behind this stunt are still helping homeopaths go out to Africa and treat people with HIV, malaria and TB. This will kill people.

Marketers must not use health professionals or celebrities to endorse medicines (Rule 12.18). Endorsements by health professionals could be viewed by the public and the ASA as giving undue appeal to one product over another or as an exploitation of the credulity of the audience.

This is pretty much all that 4Homeopathy now do. They use minor celebrities to exploit the credulity of their target audience. Getting a celebrity to wear a flowery dress on a red carpet flits around these rules. It’s PR at its worst. And it has consequences. Belief in homeopathy harms people. They delay getting proper treatment. They continue to suffer unnecessarily. Some even die.

Crikey! I wonder if any of the homeopathy fans who occasionally chance their arm on this site would care to risk a comment on this matter! And by the way-why have so many of them disappeared en masse in the last month or two?
Surely it can’t be that I – a mere non-Scientist?asked them to explain how a substance can become more potent the more it’s diluted?
A small question, but mine own.

Some critics of homeopathy thrive on sarcasm and ridicule; and then they wonder why homeopaths stay away from debates. In my previous post I posed the question: why is it that people who go to homeopaths get healthy to the point that they do not need to see a doctor anymore, bar for blood tests and the like. I gave my example, for instance: I have not been to see a doctor since 1971. Why did I go to a homeopath in the first place? Because every doctor I went to told me my sinus, hay fever etc could not be cured. Should I have been so stupid as to keep going for a non event? If that is what you want to do, good luck. There is no debate when you are happy with the results. This you cannot take away from me; sorry. I wouldn’t enter in a debate until you tried homeopathy for yourself. That is the evidence you ought to be looking for. Psychologists make people better and yet there is no laboratory evidence or blood test to prove it. I have seen results of blood tests on people suffering from Gout, uraemia and low platelet count. Historically homeopath can boast of the fact that 3 Governments (French, English, US) paid to have a hospital built in Paris in 1914, because they knew the results of homeopathic medicine during epidemics. In case you do not realize it, antibiotics were not discovered until 1928. Is that good enough evidence? Now that we are told we need to fight antibiotic resistance it becomes obvious that in such a short time, less than a century, antibiotics are causing problems of their own. When you will get to the point where you get a compromised immune system because antibiotics have done their dash, then you might be willing to try homeopathy like I did. You may be healthy right now so any debate would be academic. This is probably where you are, but sooner or later age will catch up, then we can start the debate you so wanted.

I’m sorry Gerard, but I have personally tried antibiotics, and they worked for me to the point that I have never needed them again. This, you cannot take away from me, sorry. You may believe your ‘evidence’ that antibiotics are creating problems of their own, but if you have not tried them (since 1971 at least), I’m afraid I would not enter into a debate with you until you have tried them yourself. If you didn’t respond to placebo the way I didn’t, you too might get to the point that you are willing to try conventional medicine? Then we can have the debate.

You say something I’ve heard often from the religious – it worked for you so even if there’s no scientific proof, you believe in it.
Many ailments get better of their own accord and, although doctors are often wrong in their diagnoses and prognoses, when there was nothing but ‘naturopathy’ including Homeopathy, millions died of diseases which modern medicine has eradicated or can control. Many cancer patients survive for many years after treatment. .With only Homeopathy, only a rare few would recover through spontaneous remission.
Anecdotes mean nothing.properly-conducted clinical trials are the best way to get to thuth.

So what you are saying is this: test tube experiments show that a certain synthetic medication was proven effective in an experiment conducted on a certain disease in a lab. You may call this statistical evaluation or a scientific finding, the fact remains that the medical profession admits that there is no cure for (most disease), so what does that say for those working in the field. I read the definition of statistics as being: statistics is like a drunken man leaning against a lamp post, he uses it for support rather than illumination. I think this is what you are doing here. Are you a scientist who knows better or are you a person who has read about science and you have turned it into your sacred cow? Caution is needed here, thanks.
I have worked in research and I can assure you that I understand the subject. Let me ask you: If a drug is found to be effective in say, Migraine, and is passed by the FDA, but doctors say that there is no cure for migraine. Does it mean that that particular drug does not cure migraine or does it mean that this particular drug didn’t?
I notice also that you are resorting to unscientific arguments to prove a point when you say, I quote: something I’ve heard often from the religious – it worked for you so even if there’s no scientific proof, you believe in it.’ When Jesus healed a man born blind the Pharisees went to his mother and asked her what she had to say about it. She replied: he is the one who couldn’t see and now he can, why don’t you go and ask him. I suspect here that all the Pharisees wanted was an argument rather than the fact. At least 5 doctors told me 40 years ago that there was no cure for my sinus. Were they mistaken, wrong, unscientific in their prognosis? I think not. It was their accurate diagnosis and prognosis at the time. 40 years later doctors are still saying that there is no cure for sinus. So if a person tried a herb, something homeopathic, acupuncture or whatever and got better, are you then going to say that this person is lying, does not know what he is talking about, is deluded or is he able to tell if his pain and nasal congestion are no longer there?
Then you add: “Many ailments get better of their own”. It seems strange that when millions use conventional medicine for years and when they realize that they will not get better and chose to try homeopathy and do get better, then you shift the argument by intimating that it would have got better anyway. Why was this not the case when that person was using conventional medicine?
My point is this: I tried conventional medicine for over 3 years and I did not get better (let alone the fact that my doctor had already said that there was no cure). So now suddenly when I choose to try homeopathy, all of a sudden there is a remission. How strange, I must be a special case. Has any scientist ever investigated this phenomenon? Let’s face it: you are not interested in Homeopathy because it does not sound right to you. But I suspect that you like a debate coming out of your mental faculty. I can also keep this going on and on, but I think that unless you conduct your own scientific experiment and try homeopathy for yourself you are only convincing yourself. If on the other hand you hope that by having these debates; you will somehow convince me (and others) that I am not cured even so I say I am, then you are mistaken. Why should I take medication for a disease doctors themselves say there is no cure just so I can call it scientific.
I do hope you try it for yourself, as trying is experimenting. Enough of speculation and theorizing, let’s do it and you will be glad you did.
Gerard

Maybe sarcasm is the only response left to such foolishness as that above. I saw a statement once by somebody who said ‘Homeopathy is a little too difficult for Science to understand just yet’.
Well that I’m afraid is the nature of absurd drivel. ‘Impossible to understand’ I’d say.

And by the way- Though I understand perfectly well why a fan of the homeopathy delusion would deride the use of statistics – inconvenient things- I struggle to understand how such a person would manage to wangle a job doing research. Who on Earth employed you?
As to why authorities would open homeopathy ‘hospitals’, I think it’s fairly obvious that it’s because they were silly. The reason that homeopathic departments and ‘hospitals’ are being closed down now is because a lot of people have decided to stop being silly. Probably the reason you don’t provide any demonstrable proof of homeopathy’s effectiveness in fighting outbreaks of disease is that you don’t trust statistics. Except when they suit you. Or maybe that there aren’t any.
And as to the tired old ‘Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it’ argument – well thanks but no. I shall also not be ‘trying’ to live on nothing but air and water, as the breatharians advise us to do. Or the ones that are still alive.
I do not propose to waste even a second of my time ‘trying’ a belief system that demands that I counter all known and proven laws of Physics and Chemistry and Science and Medicine, and recommends their replacement with sugar pills and water, and the grotesque claim that a substance becomes more potent the more it’s diluted, or that Jazz can cure AIDS,

also, homoeopathy has been around for what ..200 odd years. if it is so efficacious,why has modern medicine developed ? the proof of the pudding etc,would be that we would have no need to go beyond the stage where homoeopathy was invented.

Obviously you’re correct.
Homeopathic delusionists, like any other conspiracy theorists- Moon landings, 9/11, cancer cures, Big Pharma in general- have to be forced to explain how it would be possible for not even ONE person in these cover-ups to break cover and announce to the World what was going on.
If you haven’t done so, I recommend you check out a US fruitcake called Orly Taitz, one of the more fruity ones even in the ‘Birther’ movement which claims that Obama is a secret Moozlim terrorist who wasn’t born in America.
When the Hawaii authorities released his birth certificate as proof, she claimed ‘Well that’s because they’re in on it as well’.
My friend Jack criticises me for wasting my time on these people, since homeopathy is essentially a crackpot religion whose adherents are immune to logic.
In which he’s quite correct, of course.
But what the fellow Gerard can’t seem to understand, when he complains that deeply sensitive homeopathy fans don’t want to enter the debate for fear of sarcasm and ridicule, is that sarcasm and ridicule are in many instances perfectly valid means of criticism against people who just cover their ears and shout gibberish when other, more traditional means bounce off them.

I address this reply to Gail McMartin and not to those who chose to be disrespectful.

Thanks Gail: sure there is only water and sugar. But you omit the fact that there is a process of dynamysation involved in the manufacture. This is along the line of releasing an energy yet to be measured, which has been called vital force so far. In chemistry labs for instance it was traditional when you wanted to make a solution to just dissolve the substance in water, which takes but a few minutes. Then they discovered that the substance was not dissolved until it was stirred for an hour. There is an ionic process involved. And yet in the days of Pasteur for instance, a salt dissolved in water for a few minutes was considered a solution, not so today. It took a few centuries to discover that. Nano technology was not discovered until recently.
Think about it that way: a micro dose of a virus acts by causing an immune response and not by adding an actual substance in the body. The human body responds to all sorts of things. Homeopathy works by a response mechanism and not by a chemical reaction. Have you heard about exposure therapy? It also works without the addition of a substance, chemical or otherwise. So to cure fear of spiders you have to expose the person to spiders. This is what these therapists have to say: I enclose the link:
“Exposing someone to their fears or prior traumas without the client first learning the accompanying coping techniques — such as relaxation or imagery exercises — can result in a person simply being re-traumatized by the event or fear. Therefore exposure therapy is typically conducted within a psychotherapeutic relationship with a therapist trained and experienced with the technique and the related coping exercises.”http://psychcentral.com/lib/what-is-exposure-therapy/

So exposure therapy is nothing else but homeopathy in a different form. Let me remind you that the word homeopathy is made up of 2 Greek words: Homoeo (same, similar) and pathos (disease, passion, suffering, pathology). For instance someone who has recovered from a certain traumatic situation, or an addiction, will be the same person able to help someone suffering from the same condition. There is no chemistry involved. How does it work? I don’t think science has the answer. They only say that it works. Where is the scientific proof for exposure therapy? I don’t think patients care; so long as they get better they are happy. So are patients who go to homeopaths. It was Queen Victoria who introduced Homeopathy to England. It is still being used today.
Gerard

Dear Gerard,
I choose to be disrespectful, whether it pleasures you or not. You and your ‘ideas’ are basically very, very silly. You appear to be quite fantastically stupid. I don’t care who it was -Queen Victoria or Fozzie chuffin Bear-who introduced homeopathy to England. I also don’t care who it was who introduced public executions to England, or bear baiting, or child abuse. Longevity does not confer validity. A stupid, ignorant idea is still such even if it be 1.000,000 years later.
The fact that you cannot -or will not -understand this fairly basic fact goes a long way in explaining your intellectual fatuousness.
No wonder you’ve now started calling yourself ‘homelabGerard’. If you were to change it to ‘properScience labGerard’ I think you’d have the coppers round sharpish.
And by the way you still haven’t told us about this made-up company that you claim employed you as a ‘researcher’.Is that the same as people who look at a few barmy Internet sites calling what they do ‘research’? Or the ex-copper on Quackwatch who calls himself a ‘film-maker’?

Gerard, ‘It worked for me’ is not enough evidence. As Richard Feynman said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Even the best of us must guard against bias (a natural human trait) in our conclusions and thinking ‘something works for you’, without taking into account all the confounding factors would be extremely foolish. Confounding factors could be that there were other changes in your life that were actually the cause of your recovery (diet etc etc) that you have not accounted. Always remember correlation does not imply causation. But human beings are pattern seekers and will always try to make sense of something, even if there is actually no sense to be made. For instance there is no plausible mechanism for homeopathy to work, so we’ll try to find a way of justifying our ‘beliefs’, even if it makes no sense.

That is why we’ve now developed really great tools to tease out what works and what doesn’t. The gold standard is the double-blind RCT, which is the best at the moment for testing what treatments are effective. We don’t have to guess or rely on unreliable tests.any more, which is great progress.

There is a really good book if you want to learn how to think and reason critically (rather than emotionally or religiously). It is a skill that can be learned. I know, as I wish I’d learned it much earlier in life and not wasted so much time ‘believing’ in alternative remedies (especially homeopathy) because they sounded nice and gentle and rather romantic. I was living in a sort of pre-scientific ‘naturalistic’ fantasy (now I know to call it the naturalistic fallacy). And I just didn’t question how all these unproven alt meds were meant to work.

The book is ‘Trick or Treatment’ by Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst. Although it is a scientific assessment of alternative treatments, it is actually a perfect introduction to learning how to think critically and how to separate reality from delusion. Not as easy as you might think – I had to crank up my brain quite a bit. But I highly recommend it – it worked for me!

The back and forth between Gerard and the other more sensible folks here is quite an amusing one to read. I’d like to simply chime in, in response to Gerard’s supposition that homeopathy works and that science is not prepared to understand the mechanism. First, in clinical case control trials, cohort studies, etc. it is possible to measure an effect without ever knowing the mechanism. One can statistically demonstrate a difference. Homeopathy has been unable to demonstrate a benefit beyond the placebo effect in any case control trial. Research citations from a legitimate journal would be all that is needed to refute your adversaries. If magic fairy farts had an effect but science could not explain how, it could still measure and demonstrate the effect. Your claim of science being unable to explain the mechanism is essentially invalid. Please, carry on…and please feel free to refer to homeopathy as magic fairy farts hence forth.

In order to facilitate Dynimisation you obliviously need pure water. How do you get water without any left over energy from previous contact. Obviously just using regular triple distilled water is not any good as you would pick up stray energies from the process.

Gail, Dynimisation is done in Alcohol. In fact it has been proven in Lab experiments that the alcohol has to be 60% or above. Else it does not work. Such experiments are done using heart medications to monitor changes with such things as ECG. By heart medication I mean homeopathic medicines prepared in 50%, 60%, 70%, 80% alcohol etc. Note here that the effect can measured even so the mechanism may not be understood.
Gerard

So this is not the dilution of what ever you are using to cause the energy of the substance. I will change my question How do you get water for your dilutions? If you are using alcohol then how do you purify it? Why do you not get effects from the waters memory?

Hi Epik,
I will try to get the reference for you. This experiment was done in France or Germany and it was done before the age of the internet. It might be hard to find and you can’t do a search without a reference. The hard copy ref I do not have anymore. In the meantime I am enclosing a link for research done recently in India. I hope you find it interesting.http://hpathy.com/scientific-research/iit-researchers-prove-homeopathy-is-based-on-nanotechnology/
NB please note that I am not scared of the truth as some have intimated. I will not entertain a debate with anyone acting as if they have a scientific mind and hoping for scientific evidence and yet speak derogatively about something they have not personally experienced. All I am trying to do is encouraging the reader to do some fact finding rather than defending an opinion.

Hi Gail, I am happy to answer your questions. There are books on Homeopathic Pharmacy that are approved by various Governments around the world. On a forum such as this it is hard to give those details to every body’s satisfaction. What I have found so far is that those going on Quackometer are either here for the fun, or because they have to release anger, or just want to take the opposite side. I am new on this blog and happy to give an insight of my understanding but I do not have time to engage in a ping pong match. That is not science. I thought I might make this clear to those who might like to create trouble. Back to your question: In an alcoholic solution used to perform experiments Analytical Reagent grade alcohol is used; the same alcohol that all laboratories use. We homeopaths do not make our own alcohol, we buy it and need a license for it. The water is usually distilled, de ionized water and the like. Remember that in any experiment a control is used. So whatever is in the alcohol-water mixture that have an unknown energy or substance that might interfere will be taken into consideration. This is standard in all laboratories, homeopathy is no different. In some countries experiments are conducted in hospitals, for example an experiment was conducted with the permission and approval of the Prince Henry Hospital in Melbourne some 10 years ago. I will try to get this information and post it.
I trust that this answers your question.
Gerard

There are books on Homeopathic Pharmacy that are approved by various Governments around the world.

Do you mean the various Pharmacopoeia? If so, then ones such as the BP or Ph Eur simply describe (in scant detail) what homeopaths say about how they produce their sugar pills. This tells us nothing about the evidence for homeopathy nor anything about the purported mechanism of action.

One thing that delusionists like Gerard believe, or claim to. is that no one has the right to comment on anything they haven’t personally experienced. I am quite relieved that there are many others like me who do not apply this half-baked reasoning to, say, the crime of rape, or the refugee crisis.
Related to this is the idea that no one without medical qualifications has the right to criticise homeopathy. As I’ve said before, all you need to criticise homeopathy is the ability to reason, and to understand the difference between that and nonsense, cherry-picking of data, what Steve Martin called ‘lies and made-up facts, and outright gullibity.
And by the way-why is it so difficult for Gerard to lay his hands on these reports he quacks on about? If homeopathy had been shown to work, it would be IMPOSSIBLE for the World not to know about it. The whole of Science would have been turned upside down.
Also-why is a report on homeopathy difficult to track down just because it was released before the Internet was created?
As far as I remember, the Battle of Hastings occurred before then. As did the discovery of penicillin. And germ theory. But they’re quite easy to look up. Only the homeopathy stuff remains elusive. As does information about homeopathy treating the Victorian cholera outbreak, or the yellow fever in Cuba , both of which are often touted as major homeopathic successes. I complained to one man that I’d looked and looked, but still couldn’ t find anything. At which point he became quite intemperate and shouted – textually- ‘It;s all on the Internet. Look it up. I’m not doing your work for you’.
I understand that in Japan there are ‘micro-dilution colleges’, where people can ‘study’ and ‘research’ how to dilute things, and then after a few years obtain a ‘degree’.
I think I’ll start one.

very clever Barrie, so you can comment on a wine without tasting it. I thought that cure was about what makes the patient better and not what pharmaceutical manufacturers claim. You obviously were born after Thalidomide, and the rest. No more from you.

Gerard, If the heart patient study is a pre-internet study, that means it is very, very old. If it was promising, I would assume there has been *plenty* of time to replicate the findings and get to stage 3 or 4 trials, which should be available online.

Your link to the Indian study is interesting. I have some questions: It is from 2010 and seems to be a very preliminary study (although to be fair, there isn’t much information given on the link you pasted). It states that a phd student has found nano-particles from metals in homeopathic remedies. But the *important* question is: do the nano-particles have any medical effect? Just because a substance is present, doesn’t mean it is active. Has anyone looked at non-homeopathic water to see if there are nano-particles in that? And if so what is the difference between the nano-particles in the plain water and the nano-particles in the homeopathic water? There have been 6 years since 2010, so what has been going on with further research into this nano-particle hypothesis? I would have thought Boiron or other manufacturers would have jumped all over it.

I’m afraid you are going to have a hard time convincing me that homeopathy is effective unless you can show me many good quality trials that show that subjects taking the nano-particle homeopathic remedy (or, actually, any type of homeopathic remedy) do better than placebo in double-blind RCT trials? Now that would be *really* interesting, especially if they have published in a high quality journal. The only conclusion I can draw from the fact that there aren’t tons of irrefutable trials out there, is that homeopathy doesn’t work as there has been more than enough time to prove it.

btw – the 2010 study was published in the journal ‘Homeopathy’. I thought we were meant to look for trials from high quality journals with a good journal rating. “Homeopathy” is not ranked very highly.

Gerard,
Not a brilliant reply, you have to admit.
All the points avoided, apart from the one silly one about wine.
I’ll be the one to decide whether there’ll be more from me. Your decision about whether to read it is yours to make.
Not only was I alive when thalidomide came along, but as it happens also when Polio vaccinations did. A bit late for my Auntie Norma, who contracted the illness at the end of the 40s and spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair.
She died last week.
What a pity she didn’t know about homeopathy’s claims to cure it. She’d have been able to carry on her career as a dancer.

Hah, hi Barrie, perhaps I disguised my intentions too well, or maybe you’re swatting so many silly posts that you missed that I was taking the piss out of magic water swallowers!
Seven days without, a week with?
Come on!

Yep. You right. Missed it maybe Will check back.But if you and I are fellow magic water swallower swatters-welcome aboard. They’re easy, but the little bastards do stick around a bit. Check the feller Gerard. Top class clown. Utterly TOP CLASS clown.No wit, no intelligence, no nowt.

Gerard: A study commissioned by the British government came to the conclusion that Homeopathy is ‘witchcraft’. Do you understand how unscientific the whole idea is? That a small group of people try any substance that comes into their heads – these have included dandruff and twiglets!) and then record any symptoms they have over the next hours. They then conclude that a homeopathic dilution of this substance will cure those symptoms. This is so ridiculously un-scientific that it is impossible for me to understand why you would be convinced by this quackery! How does an onion-related ‘remedy’ help with sore eyes or a yellow substance, diluted until there’s nothing left but water, help with jaundice, just because jaundice causes yellow skin and eyes? It is laughable in the extreme. There is no proof that banging a vial of water causes it to ‘remember’ the substance that it once contained and even if it did, the method of choosing ‘like cures like’ cures is ridiculous. WHY do you WANT to believe this nonsense? Probably because it is harmless and causes no side-effects. At the same time, it cannot cure anything either! People die because they delay getting real, effective medical treatment. I knew a woman with cancer who died unnecessarily because of her religious-like faith in Homeopathy.This is madness!

‘like cures like’ is so mad. The cure for being shot is clearly more bullets. Or some water that used to have a bullet near it?
Homeopathy is for middle class hippies with nothing particularly wrong with them.
How many times do we see homeopaths attending Road traffic accidents?

Eddy, agreed that homeopathy is for middle class hippies with nothing better to do.

The problem is that some of these deluded idiots take their ‘cures’ for Aids and Ebola to Africa. Which isn’t funny. I’m not sure whether this should count as manslaughter or murder, but I suppose it doesn’t matter since it is unlikely the authorities will do anything about it.

In the UK, their ethics aren’t great either, when they recommend HP for malaria prevention or as a subtitute for childhood vaccinations. Or even worse as a ‘side effect free’ cancer treatment (no side effects=no effects in this case). It is shocking that no legal action is taken against these quacks, since that looks like the only way of stopping them preying on the vulnerable.

Unfortunately it is very hard for people to change their minds about belief systems (which is what homeopathy is really), especially when they have years of their lives, and perhaps even their source of income, invested in maintaining that belief. It is sad to see the hoops they will jump through to maintain the resulting cognitive dissonance! It takes a special type of individual to break free from the delusion. I suspect our friend Gerard on here is not one of those.

I’m intrigued as to what the HP remedy ‘Brillo Pad’ could possibly be for. Allergy to washing-up?

‘Worked in research’ covers a multitude of sins. I remember a female histologist who expounded several strange unsupportable ideas apropos of nothing and only with difficulty was persuaded to cut the sections as we needed them cut.

I have known others of the technician class and even some of my PhD possessing colleagues expound various sillinesses. Lots of stuff can just like religion be squared with science by compartmentalising them in the brain. The way you have to think at work is NEVER applied to the special, precious thing.

There used to be a fairly eminent Physics don who did BBC Radio 4’s religious Thought For The Day and if one of his students had ever evinced the sort of sloppy reasoning he would happily display at 07:40 he would doubtless fail them.

Epik- I’ve made a similar point previously about the essential criminality of what these people are up to.
Why nobody’s taken the buggers to court in order to challenge their lies about the medical profession being in the pay of ‘Big Pharma’-irritating, trite phrase- I can’t imagine.
I’ve even been accused of this myself. As have two ex-girlfriend pharmacists.None of these rotters ever provides any evidence that I, and people like me, are taking backhanders from shadowy organisations. But I suppose if you believe in this extremist garbage in the first place then you’re pretty well immune to the idea that evidence of any kind actually matters.
And by the way – I agree about the Simon Singh book. I recommend intelligent, decent people -perhaps we’ll excuse Gerard from this-to look into how the impoverished, put-upon Big Snake Oil-another lie- tried to ruin the feller Singh’s entire career for daring to do no more than criticise their stupid lying lucrative industry.
I believe this very site has experienced similar.
Other, similar books you probably know- Rose Shapiro ‘Suckers’, and of course Ben Goldacre’s stuff.
I love where he says ‘Dr Gillian McKeith, or to give her her proper title, ‘Gillian McKeith’, since of course she purchased her degree from some cowboy outfit in the US.

This is my reply to Addy J
If you don’t believe in using the same thing to cure the same thing; then next time you get bitten by a snake, do not go to a hospital.
Regarding your silly comment concerning bullets, let me remind you that it was not a bullet they used to heal a wound but the gunpowder.
Homeopaths do not attend traffic accidents because the law does not allow it without a medical license. This is present day medical bias; however here are some quotes from history that might give you an insight in what has been going on:
…the American Medical Association in the 19th century was so threatened by homeopathic medicine that the AMA created and enforced an ethics code that barred AMA members from consulting with homeopathic doctors or homeopathic patients.
…Despite the success of homeopathic treatment on the military leader of the Union army, that very month, January 1862, according to Rafuse, “The Army Medical Board rejected requests by homeopathic doctors to serve in military hospitals, arguing that to grant this request would invite applications from all types of ‘quacks’ and ‘charlatans’ claiming medical expertise.” The problem with this false critique is that homeopathic doctors at that time graduated from various leading conventional medical schools or select homeopathic medical schools, such as Boston University, Hahnemann Medical School (in Philadelphia), or the New York Homeopathic Medical College (many famous medical schools today started off as homeopathic medical colleges).
The public today does not adequately understand the degree of animosity that conventional doctors had toward homeopathic physicians. The reasoning for this animosity is probably best described in the words of one doctor to an AMA meeting:
“Too many wives of conventional physicians are going to homeopathic physicians. And to make it worse,” he added, “they are taking their children to homeopaths too.”
You can read more for yourself: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ullman/abraham-lincoln-homeopathy_b_2177808.html

Dana Ullman..oh deary me. even if Lincoln was pro homoeopathy…so what ?..its history. I am sure we could find many examples of good,noble and heroic people backing any number of now defunct medical practices..
see here for the full context of the mark Twain quote that Mr ullman uses in that articlehttp://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Mark_Twain

Gerard,
So far have you slipped into the realm of outright lunacy that I find myself slightly uncomfortable ‘debating’ with you.
I shall leave the field of combat, and allow others to take you on.
Good luck everybody.

Of course! They would use gunpowder, not bullets, to cure wounds! What was I thinking?
Gérard, I recommend getting some exercise and regular sleep, seeing people and listening to music.
The only thing homeopathetic remedies can cure is mild thirst and full wallets.

How do I know you are genuine about homeopathy when you are deceitful about your statements. Once caught you claim that it was not bullets but Gunpowder. Show me evidence that you meant what you said. Do you want to be believed? tell it how it is, if you claim to be a scientific minded person, prove it to me. Don’t rave with ridicule, mocking people you don’t know.
The Bible says that by your words you will be judged. In other words you are judging yourself, not me. May God bless you.
Gerard

Sorry- couldn’t resist another comment on the idea that foolish ideas shouldn’t be subjected to sarcasm and ridicule. I just read the news item about the Australian extremist who intended to pack a kangaroo with explosives, paint the IS symbol on it, then set it on the police.
It reminded me of the Chris Morris ‘The Day Today’ sketch about the ‘bombdogs’-it’s on Youtube- and the wonderful Steve Coogan one in response to Thatcher’s notion-absurd even by her standards- that IRA spokesmen when interviewed should be denied the ‘oxygen of publicity’, and should have their comments replaced by a voice-over intoning exactly the same words, in the same accent, thus demolishing the whole concept.

“A study commissioned by the British government came to the conclusion that Homeopathy is ‘witchcraft’. Do you understand how unscientific the whole idea is?

It is unscientific because you did not learn this science. Similar point was made to the House of commons in 1854:

“That by introducing the returns of homœopathic practitioners they (the Treatment Committee) would not only compromise the value and utility of their averages of Cure, as deduced from the operation of known remedies, but they would give an unjustifiable sanction to an empirical practice, alike opposed to the maintenance of truth and to the progress of science.”

Only the commenters were forced to accept the results. The comment was made because it showed the SCIENTIFIC TREATMENT in very poor light when compared with results of homeopathic treatment.

Iqbal-having re-read your comment, and followed the link you provide, I conclude that you are indeed a supporter of homeopathy and of this grotesque Indian Army foolishness.
I have to say that, magnificent though India may be in some respects, it is however a country that believes very greatly in backward, murderous nonsense in other respects. And as I imagine you’ll know, ‘murderous’ is a somewhat apposite term in relation to what happens on occasion to those brave enough to challenge ‘miracle workers’ and other rancid quacks in that country.
Probably you’ll carry on believing however that the increasing closures of hospital homeopathic units is part of Big Pharma’s world domination plan.

“The gold standard is the double-blind RCT, which is the best at the moment for testing what treatments are effective. We don’t have to guess or rely on unreliable tests.any more, which is great progress. ”

How do you explain drug recalls? Or Vioxx killing ove 140,000 Americans alone?

“The book is ‘Trick or Treatment’ by Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst. Although it is a scientific assessment of alternative treatments, it is actually a perfect introduction to learning how to think critically and how to separate reality from delusion. ”

The critical assessment is who funded the book or blog or the detailed scientific study!

Mr. Ernst is on unsure ground regarding homeopathy. All his life he stated that homeopathic remedies cannot have any effect. Then he suddenly finds that Rhus tox has adverse effect?

Iqbal. Stop it now. You’re as deranged as the fellow Gerard. You keep not good company in that respect.
And as to the slimy insinuation in your comment ‘Who funded the Simon Singh book’ -you should be ashamed, sir. But I’ve encountered plenty of your type before, so I shall not expect the impossible.
In fact people of your type have accused me of being in the pay of Big Pharma, simply for expressing any criticism.
And then when I’ve mentioned 2 girlfriends who were pharmacists-Brighton University, London Hospital for Nervous Diseases- friends who were nurses, another friend who’s one of the UK’s highest-ranked doctors-Emily Harrop, married name Clark- all I get is abuse along the line of ‘Ah yes, your pals in the Big Pharma controlled medical system’.
Why don’t you try acting your age, rather than your sock size?

“How do you explain drug recalls? Or Vioxx killing ove 140,000 Americans alone”:
Yup nobody and nothing is perfect. Science is constantly progressing. Pharmaceutical companies have some pretty iffy ethics (but in my opinion not nearly as iffy as Homeopathic manufacturers who knowingly make massive profits from ineffective or disproven, magical ‘remedies’). At least pharmaceutical companies a *trying* to produce effective medicines. You talk about Vioxx – but you ignore a thousands of fantastic, safe life saving drugs that modern medicine as given us.

“The critical assessment is who funded the book or blog or the detailed scientific study!”

The book “Trick or Treatment” is just a book. It is not a scientific study. It is a brilliant introduction to how to think critically, and I really recommend you actually read it. You will be surprised at what you learn, Iqbal, I promise. (To my shame, I used to “think” like you – ie uncritically, so I know what I’m talking about here).

“Mr. Ernst is on unsure ground regarding homeopathy. All his life he stated that homeopathic remedies cannot have any effect.”

Can you tell me what leads you to claim “*All his life* he stated that homeopathic remedies cannot have any effect.” ? Please can you point me to the evidence for this claim?

Here is a quote from a Guardian article by Professor Ernst* ( you might like to read in full as you may learn something from it – link below):

” Homeopathy has intrigued me for many years; in a way, I grew up with it. Our family doctor was a homeopath, and my very first job as a junior doctor, was in a German homeopathic hospital.”

Later in life when he was in a position, as Professor of Complementary Medicine at Exeter University, to study homeopathy scientifically he began to change his mind. He says that he was not interested in disproving or proving homeopathy, but was interested in the results of the trials – whatever those results might be, That is what the scientific method is about, Iqbal.

Iqbal- I can see it’s uncomfortable for you to be asked to engage with actual ideas here.
But at least give it a go, rather than just posting wonderful photos of long-ago ‘homeopathy hospitals’, many or most of which are no longer in existence.The reason we’ve moved on from Indian folk beliefs is-well- we’ve moved on on from Indian folk beliefs.
The simple fact is that if what you claim had actually happened in relation to the Victorian cholera epidemic – i.e. that ‘homeopathy’ had obtained the wonderful effects you say it did- we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. ‘Homeopathy’ wouldn’t be called ‘alternative medicine’, but would simply be called ‘medicine’.
Which bit of this don’t you understand?

“Yup nobody and nothing is perfect. Science is constantly progressing.”

This is a very lame excuse for killing patients that come to the doctor with hope of being treated for simple ailments.

Have you read Dr.Leape of the Harvard Medical School? Millions die worldwide (if data for deaths in America is extrapolated for the world) states Barbara Starfield in her excellent article (JAMA 2000; 284:483-485) which reiterates the study by Leape of the Harvard Medical School, adding many more glaring dangers to the list already given.

“At least pharmaceutical companies a *trying* to produce effective medicines. You talk about Vioxx – but you ignore a thousands of fantastic, safe life saving drugs that modern medicine as given us.”

Name few medicines that come without side effects. For your information, there are no medicines in scientific system. Only drugs.

When Vioxx was killing patients, what were the doctors doing?

“Can you tell me what leads you to claim “*All his life* he stated that homeopathic remedies cannot have any effect.” ? Please can you point me to the evidence for this claim?”

see below

“Later in life when he was in a position, as Professor of Complementary Medicine at Exeter University, to study homeopathy scientifically he began to change his mind. He says that he was not interested in disproving or proving homeopathy, but was interested in the results of the trials – whatever those results might be,”

“having re-read your comment, and followed the link you provide, I conclude that you are indeed a supporter of homeopathy and of this grotesque Indian Army foolishness.”

You did not read the article properly:

“…homeopathy, to treat severely-ill soldiers, veterans and their dependents who have not responded to conventional treatment.”

” “Mainstream doctors have traditionally resisted alternative medicine treatment. But let’s be frank, we really don’t have the domain knowledge to dismiss it. The idea behind the experiment is to see if alternative medicine can work where allopathy has no answers,” said Lieutenant General BK Chopra, director general, Armed Forces Medical Services (AFMS).”

““We don’t have much to offer to such patients and perhaps some other treatment could work for them. ”

“I have to say that, magnificent though India may be in some respects, it is however a country that believes very greatly in backward, murderous nonsense in other respects…………….”

If you are careful with your language, you may get a response from me. But for your sake, read this many times: “But let’s be frank, we really don’t have the domain knowledge to dismiss it.” This is words of a very senior doctor. And, you are?

“Probably you’ll carry on believing however that the increasing closures of hospital homeopathic units is part of Big Pharma’s world domination plan.”

The big pharma offers drugs for a quick fix. They seldom offer a cure. This is poor business practice. A cured patient is poor business. People with diabetes, blood pressure are better bets. Or create patients: cholesterol.

And in turn, if you are careful with your intellectual powers, you may get a response from me, you pompous twonk.
As to reading the fatuous comment .many times’- I believe that nonsense is still nonsense, however many times one reads it. Not a difficult idea to grasp, except for people who believe in homeopathy, a weird cult that has been shown not to work many times. But still they persist.
Substitute ‘magic spells’ or ‘Voodoo’ or ‘witchcraft’ for ‘homeopathy’ in the Indian doctor’s statement to see the idiocy of it.
Where did he study medicine? McDonald’s?

The point that Iqbal makes about some drugs being found to be unsafe is one commonly made by fans of this religion. As Dara O’ Briain says in his wonderful rant against homeopathy, ‘Of course scientists don’t know everything. If they did, they’d stop.’ But the fact remains that huge numbers of drugs are perfectly safe and have saved millions of lives. In fact a good friend is currently having his life saved by drugs and injections, Which make him throw up the day after. But which at least are proving effective.
And as to his notion that one is not entitled to an opinion on this matter unless one has a medical qualification-well I refer to your often-made point about ‘critical thinking’. Something that scares quacks, which is why they tried to ruin Simon Singh’s career.
I’ve made the point before that it’s necessary only to have the ability to spot nonsense, misuse of statistics, and downright lies. If I were suffering from an illness that the proper doctors couldn’t treat, I still would not dream of going to a homeopath, since everything I’ve read about it suggests that it’s no more than a baseless religion.
And again-to repeat an analogy I’ve used before- if I needed my TV fixing, I’d bring in a qualified TV repair man with the proper box of tools. If he then were mystified as to the problem, I wouldn’t turn to the feller who claimed to be able to fix it by waving sausages at it. Such are my ‘crtical thinking’ skills that I know it’s irrelevant for me to have a TV repair qualification or to know how a TV works in order to be able to discern a charlatan.

Homeopathy is not just sugar and water, it is the serial dilution of the substance to the point that not one molecule of the original substance can exist in the final product. If this is indeed the case, and mathematicaly it is true, where did all those molecules go ? Surely by this logic there must be millions of doses with 0 molecules in and several with 1 molecule each.

Its either that or the molecules were split into their constituent atoms, who knows maybe homeopaths split the atom first just by shaking water !

Secondly by your definition of homeopathy if it is diluted in water, how pure is that water ?
So pure that no molecule that isnt water can exist within it ? Sound familiar ?
Following htis logic through all water would contain every homeopathic remdy possible in it,
maybe thats why a glass of water can help a headache ! 😛

And fyi I have tried homeopath for many things in the past but unlike many people I can form an objective opinion, I went in with the hope that it would work but it didnt for me, also as organic farmers we have to use alternate medicine and resort to drugs as last resort. and in that we have seen many miracle cures, even the vet has been amazed, however although all documented these are not empirical evidence as there is no control. That is what makes it a non scientific approach nothing more, the fact that in any double blind trial that has ever been conducted (and agreed as fair beforehand) homeopathy doesnt work any better than placebo.

We still continue to use homeopathy, but neither of us believe it works, more it gives us the
confidence? to do nothing and let the animal / person get better on their own, which can be no bad thing in many cases, but deadly in others.

Lastly if you are going to start using the bible to defend homeopathy your treading on a very dangerous road, Jesus said this…. Unlikely he did if he existed.

Remember just keep an open mind, just not so open that your brain falls out.

Barrie, if you are itching to get a reply from me forget it. I already told you that you were not good material to have a debate with.
However, if you want to have a go at somebody why don’t you tackle the medical profession? They are the ones saying that one should be a doctor to practice homeopathy.
Good luck
Gerard

The fact that I addressed my reply to someone called Gail should have been clue enough even to a religious fruitcake of your type that the message were not intended for you.Are you now so barkingly insane that you don’t even remember your own name? No wonder you believe in homeopath.

Extraordinarily wonderful reply from Anne Eames, president of the ‘Faculty of Homeopathy’, whatever that is, when asked how her magic potions can possibly work, when there’s not one molecule left of the original substance-
‘We think the explanation for homeopathy comes from physics, not from chemistry, so the molecules are less important.’
Reminds me of the amazing, and highly recommended, Youtube clip of ‘Dr’ Charlene Werner attempting to define homeopathy by taking on Einstein, and redefining E=MC2 in her own fashion, dropping the ‘C’ bit for convenience.
The fact that she’s 8 – nil down in the first 2 minutes doesn’t deter the plucky contrarian, but inevitably she goes down by a score that one normally sees only when American Samoa play Australia at footer.

I marvel at the passion of various camps when this topic comes up. Most interestingly it often seems the folks that most want PROOF, get really insecure about their belief that something’s in the world are (?) for sure, OK, what ever. And they put full confidence in what itself is constantly evolving standards.

Then there is the camp who allow that there are something’s that we do not yet know how to test or measure. And consider less is more as in a better personal risk, since we DO know ‘the body follow mind’.

I am ashamed how much energy gets put into tearing something harmless down, IF it really is harmless?? And suggest folks either be accepting of everyone’s right to make their own choices and Mistakes or spend their time examining their own insecurity about what they demand should be want everybody put their faith in.

I would love to measure how racist or fundamentally religious the same sure of themselves folks views were. I bet that could be measured too!

I think that Ms Spock seems to have a supply of apostrophes. It’s just she has only a vague grasp of their purpose, and on the occasions she uses them, she treats them as decoration.
But anyway-even more serious matters.
A friend has just informed me that his little granddaughter has skin cancer.
I expect the homeopaths know of a cure, it’s just that Big Pharma has succeeded in gagging them, which is why we’ve not heard of it.
Any ideas anyone? Gerard? Iqbal? Spock Woman?
Don’t be shy now. As you say, it’s only the closed-minded and those in the pay of the drug companies who won’t listen to you.
Meanwhile, I’ll tell them help is on the way shall I?
Thanks in advance.

Did you write that in a rush? Did you just throw a handful of words and punctuation marks in the air and copy them in the order they came down?
I’d forget the homeopathy. Even if there were any sense in it, you seem incapable of forming a comprehensible sentence, let alone a cogent thought. Although on second thoughts maybe the latter is one of the main qualifications for this belief.

Out of here and unsubscribing. Dirty, Dirty, place.
Grandma taught me: One is known by the company they keep!

While I ‘slam the door’ behind me…..may I suggest the inhabitants apparently are wanting (?) somewhere to act out frustration freely…… seem to have been failed by modern chemistry to solve their personality-hate issues.

Andy-of course you were right not to publish my comment, in which-out of anger at these fools-I’d mentioned specific details I I shouldn’t have. So I apologise
Let me put my comment another way.
My friend’s young granddaughter has been diagnosed with skin cancer. The homeopaths -or some of them- claim that cancer can be cured, or at least ameliorated, by Vitamin C, or by drinking water when you get up in the morning, or by a ‘correct’ diet.
I am asking them to provide details. In other ‘discussions’, these wandering buffoons claim that the evidence is all in, and that it’s only closed-minded people such as myself who refuse to see it. But I can’t find the evidence, and whenever I ask these people to provide it, they refuse. Which as far as I can see makes them no better than the ‘Bg Pharma’ people they pretend to despise.
Whichever way-if you have the evidence for your belief, then disclose it and be a hero. Or withhold it and be a charlatan.

Adam, I never said that antibiotics do not work, only that because they have been abused now we have the problem of fighting antibiotic resistance. Homeopathy also works and you neither can’t take this away from me. I have not had to try antibiotics since 1971, because I have not needed them thanks to homeopathy. If in turn you are able to say that you have not had to use homeopathy because antibiotics have always worked on you, then bravo!
The person you will have to debate with in this case is not me but the director of health of the UN who has stated that the abuse of antibiotics has led to antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Now we can have a debate, now that we agree that both antibiotics and homeopathy work, one for the better, the other for the worse!
The next question then is: what is preferable? Let us say the one that cost less-that’s homeopathy, second, the one that does not create antibiotic resistance-again that’s homeopathy.
A google search of the cause of antibiotic resistance gives the following results:
1. Repeated and improper uses of antibiotics are primary causes of the increase in drug-resistant bacteria.
2. Widespread use of antibiotics promotes the spread of antibiotic resistance
Here is the link. http://www.rxlist.com/antibiotic_resistance-page3/drugs-condition.htm

You are right saying that I too might get to the point where I am willing to try conventional medicine. I think that when age catches up with us, as it will unless we die of accident or old age, drugs can play a part in palliative medicine. Remember here that I am not biased but practical. Why take any medicine if they are not required? Why refuse homeopathy because we are led to believe it does not work?
So here you have it: I will take conventional medicine in cases where homeopathy is not able to get the job done, but you in turn must agree to take homeopathy if only to prove it to yourself. Fair enough. If you say you don’t need it then why have a debate at all.

you obviously only want a debate and not understanding of what reality is. How ridiculous. You think I should try antibiotics like one tries a new recipe? Antibiotics are powerful cures, everyone knows that, but you don’t just try it to see if it works, unless you are sick. What I am saying is this: that homeopathy also cures. I use them not try them. As long as they work I don’t need antibiotics. This way I enjoy the value of both. But when you are biased against one of the two therapies, you miss out on one of them, whilst I get the benefit of of both. That is what brilliant means, I have tried both and they both work, when will get real and try homeopathy and that will be your evidence, not some intellectual dissertation full of words, and no substance.
Gerard